Year Zero

Rob Gittins

Publication date: 6th May 2025

Publisher: Hobeck

SYNOPSIS

Berlin. May 1945

A city without institutions in a continent that had become a wasteland

British prime minister, Winston Churchill, has a problem. One of the former Nazis now incarcerated in a camp is actually a British spy, Edward Kayne, who’d been planted at the heart of the Reich in Hitler’s Berlin Bunker. Kayne has intercepted a top-secret document that Churchill insists is vital to settling the peace. Kayne, and that document, must not fall into the wrong hands.

A bitterly disillusioned ex-army captain, Martin Geller is selected to journey into the heart of darkness and extract Kayne. But a carrot is dangled before him. His daughter, Zaya, had been abducted two years before and gifted to a high-ranking Nazi as part of the Lebensborn programme. Geller sets off on a two-pronged mission – to extract Kayne and to rescue Zaya.

Can Geller rescue his daughter from the gates of hell? And how does Geller reconcile the rescue of Kayne with his knowledge that by doing so he may be condemning the world to a new Armageddon?

MY REVIEW

This is a story of trying to survive against all the odds.

It definitely kept me on my toes keeping track of the British spies, Churchill’s plans, the German SS, Zaya the abducted child and the mother and father’s relentless search for her.

The author does not hold back when describing the horror of WW2. The camps, the evil SS, the murders.

Kayne, a British spy, holds a crucially important piece of information which must reach Churchill. Geller has the skills to get Kayne back to Britain, and at the same time he might just save his own young daughter too.

I found parts of the book to be rather harrowing, and I struggled to read some of the horrific descriptions, especially of children and babies being murdered. Very sadly this was the reality of life and death for so many people.

I did thoroughly enjoy the addictive plot and I also learned a great many facts along the way including how and why penicillin was pushed into production and used by the army, how pigeons and dogs did important work for the war, and how Anthony Eden was born just a few miles from where I live in County Durham where he returned after his son was killed. He was visited there by Churchill. I was fascinated to read more about the German ‘Race and Settlement’ office, and how they selected people for the Lebensborn breeding programme to produce a ‘perfect’ race. Zaya was abducted from her home in Tibet, having been checked and measured and found to be a prime example for the programme.

I can imagine many hours of research have gone into writing this book by an author who clearly has a huge amount of interest in WW2. 

There is so much to take in, I feel I should read the book again!

Thanks to Rebecca at Hobeck for my spot on the blog tour.